Joseph Sabino Mistick Columns category, Page 7

After Sandy Hook, many people thought that surely Congress would act. The slaughter of 20 6- and 7-year-olds at their school by a 20-year-old mentally disturbed male was impossible to comprehend. The killer used a military-style weapon and high-capacity magazines to kill innocent babies. In an address to the nation...

Ralph Dudgeon has played taps hundreds of times during his 73 years. Starting when he was 11 years old, he would climb onto the East McKeesport borough firetruck at the end of the Memorial Day parade for the ride to the cemetery where he and his father — Ralph the...

Where I grew up, Election Day was a holiday, a twice-yearly chance to celebrate American freedom. In neighborhoods with families from all over Europe, voting was a sacred moment, a reminder of a right they never had, a ritual that marked the blessings of the New World. After our grandparents...

As Democrats and Republicans go to the polls this Tuesday to select their party’s candidates for the November election, over 1 million Pennsylvanians who are registered independent will sit it out. As a closed primary state, Pennsylvania does not permit independent voters to cast ballots in either party’s primary. This...

Primary elections are rarely real barnburners. Candidates in each party are solely focused on becoming their party’s nominee for the fall election. After the primary, they would normally all unite behind the victor and then turn their fire on the other party’s nominee. But this year is different. This year,...

When 19th-century journalist Charles Dudley Warner wrote, “True it is that politics makes strange bedfellows,” he was talking about political opponents who were forced by circumstances to work together. Either for common interest or for the common good, they got past their differences. It’s not like that anymore. Cultural warriors...

In a scene that is far too familiar, over 100 citizens and community leaders gathered at Allegheny Center Alliance Church last week to pray for an end to the gun violence that is robbing us of our youth and putting our community in peril. Three days earlier, two 17-year-old boys,...

Edin Mesic is a Pittsburgher now. But he will never forget the Austrian grandmother who shared a train compartment with him and his brother, Mick, on the night train from Vienna to Munich three decades ago. The brothers were running for their lives from genocide in Bosnia and the “liquidation”...

Do not look away. The evening newscasters warned us that we may not want to see the images of Vladimir Putin’s slaughter of citizens in Ukraine. But we learned a long time ago that we cannot afford to look away from crimes like these. On Tuesday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy...

When it was disclosed that Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, had been communicating with Trump White House officials and advising them to overturn the lawful election of Joe Biden in the run-up to the Jan. 6 insurrection, the Supreme Court’s impartiality took another hit. Ginni Thomas is not...

It is a question as old as time, one for which there is no universally acceptable answer. Because of Vladimir Putin and his savage invasion of Ukraine, it is a question that is front and center again: How could there be such evil in this world? “Evil” is the only...

“Cometh the hour, cometh the man.” No one is sure who first said that, but there is no mistaking what it means lately. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former comedian and television personality, has astonished the world with his ability to lead and unite his people in the face of...

It was one of those little surprises, a card sent to the office by a friend from overseas in the thick of the pandemic, not getting into my hands until months later because we were all still working from home. It was from Simon Kale, from Bath, England, a keen...

When I was a boy, we moved from Braddock to one of the small towns upwind from the mill smoke that we breathed every day. The post-World War II GI Bill put mortgages and small homes within reach of our families, and better union contracts meant a little extra cash....

Like most newly elected chief executives, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey is entitled to a bit of a political honeymoon. But soon after his swearing-in, it became clear that there is no time for a grace period, because Gainey’s first two months have been full of surprises — none of them...

In the wake of the latest and perhaps the last coronavirus surge, big-city mayors are grappling with changes to every aspect of urban life. And nothing has changed more than most cities’ downtown districts. What are threatened here are those revenue streams that pay for essential municipal and social services...

President Dwight David Eisenhower knew how to fight cancel culture before it had a name. As Sen. Joe McCarthy was destroying careers, attacking the Voice of America and demanding that books authored by those who he recklessly called “known Communists” be removed from library bookshelves, Eisenhower had a better plan....

Bill Peduto traveled the world for eight years and held forth on matters far beyond the power of any local official. What the people of Pittsburgh needed was for him to stay home and pay attention to the basics of city government. Now, the Fern Hollow Bridge has collapsed into...

When Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is seeking the Republican nomination in the U.S. Senate race, made a campaign appearance in Westmoreland County last week, it had all the excitement of a celebrity event, with Oz supporters jockeying for selfies with the star-politician. Known as Dr. Oz on his television show,...

For Larry Lagattuta, Pittsburgh’s biscotti baron and owner of Enrico Biscotti and Cafe in the Strip District, baking bread is a ritual that has served him and his family well through good times and bad. “I can’t remember ever not doing it. In my family, it ties us to the...

One morning about 10 years ago I stumbled into the Square Cafe just after dawn, and I had a solid breakfast among some familiar faces. I was happy to see my old friend Rick Sebak there. He was filming “Breakfast Special 2” for WQED. Sebak is known for preserving all...

Smedley Butler is not a name most Americans recognize. But if you were in the United States Marine Corps, you heard his name plenty. Maj. Gen. Butler, sometimes called “The Fighting Quaker,” joined the Marines at age 17 to fight in the Spanish- American War. Butler fought in wars around the...

On New Year’s Day in 1773, Anglican priest John Newton used one of his poems to illustrate a point in his sermon, and when those words were later set to music by American composer William Walker in 1835, it became the hymn that we now know as “Amazing Grace.” Newton’s...

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is one of those honest songs that calls for strength and hope while recognizing the sadness of the times. It was written by Hugh Martin in the thick of World War II and first sung by Judy Garland in the 1944 movie “Meet Me...

As the nation became aware of the devastation caused by last week’s tornadoes, we were reminded once again what the word “united” means in the United States of America. Cutting across nine states — Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee — there were at least 44...